During the 2002 campaign to convince voters to fund a new monorail for Seattle, the Elevated Transportation Company passed out refrigerator magnet tickets for a free ride on opening day: December 15, 2007.

For five years I've kept that magnet on my fridge, waiting for our glorious transportation future. Now that the day has finally arrived, where is my monorail ride?

I'll just have to content myself by taking a ride on the safely-rebuilt SR99 viaduct, repaired after it was damaged in the Nisqually earthquake almost seven years ago. Oh, wait...

1. I too have kept that refrigerator magnet, the most expensive such magnet ever purchased. I want that monorail ride too. Thanks to Andy MacDonald for reminding us of the ill-fated monorail campaign. What a ripoff, and Seattle traffic just keeps getting worse and worse, while the "process" of analyzing alternatives continues. Look at the huge number of cars parked in the vast Boeing parking lots at the Everett plant, for instance.
Posted by: Shy Gentleman on December 15, 2007 11:41 AM

2. I too have kept that refrigerator magnet, the most expensive such magnet ever purchased. I want that monorail ride too. Thanks to Andy MacDonald for reminding us of the ill-fated monorail campaign. What a ripoff, and Seattle traffic just keeps getting worse and worse, while the "process" of analyzing alternatives continues. Look at the huge number of cars parked in the vast Boeing parking lots at the Everett plant, for instance.
Posted by: Shy Gentleman on December 15, 2007 11:42 AM

3. Come now, gentlemen, please explain how you can profess to honor such symbolism in Seattle? You must be the last to understand that those glitzy symbols are merely picturesque folk art and were never intended to be taken seriously.

Seattle has a long and honorable history of using such creations (remember the 1996 promotions for Link Light Rail?) as diversions for the gullible while the statists at the helm steer us ever closer to a true People's Republic - with wads of dough for them to spin off to their favored unions and consultants and contractors, of course. Effective, or economic, public transportation was never going to be part of the deal. They just want us 'out of our cars' so their limos won't be impeded in their stately progress. They also yearn for more monumentally bloated folk art, in the forms of the symbolic transportation gimmicks such as the Lake Union streetcar, honoring themselves.

And La Gregoire now has been re-bamboozled into suggesting the dumping of all the viaduct traffic back into downtown Seattle. Wonder what the picturesque folk art symbol of that campaign will be?

4. Ha! You were taken for a ride a long time ago and didn't even know it.
Posted by: Huey on December 15, 2007 12:21 PM

5. I guess we could call if the "Ride of the Century", but which century?
Posted by: katomar on December 15, 2007 12:28 PM

6. Go to Westlake and ride the new S.L.U.T. It's a better ride anyway....
Posted by: Doc-T on December 15, 2007 12:52 PM

7. All you liberal trolls who tell us how astonished you are that we don't want to have our taxes raised for BOONDOGGLES, take a hard look. If you want another example of a BOONDOGGLE of wasted taxation, look here .
Posted by: pbj on December 15, 2007 01:36 PM

8. Go ahead and take your cheap shot at the liberals pbj. Especially since your conservative congress and president have done such a bang up job of fiscal responsibility. How many magnets you suppose we could have bought with the money we have dropped in the sink hole of Iraq. The magnets probably would have made us safer.
Posted by: jamesb on December 15, 2007 02:09 PM

9. What the war in Iraq has to do with local liberal boondoggles is beyond my comprehension.

A more on-topic comment might be to wonder what happened to the money designated back in 2003 to build 4 replacement ferries. Liberals and their media lapdogs are being awfully quiet about that subject, aren't they?

10. #9, Bill, Please expound on the 4 ferries in 2003. I live on the East Side and do not pay too much attention to that part of the transportation issue.
Posted by: Yakima George on December 15, 2007 03:29 PM

11. It's hard to find anything concrete on what exactly happened to the 2003 allocation. As I understand it progress hasn't even gotten to design stage. KOMO TV vaguely reports that the procurement process has been "mired in legal challenges". http://www.komotv.com/news/12476151.html

If the 2003 effort to build new ferries has been so "mired" what would make one believe that Gregoire's new effort to replace the Steel Electrics would not suffer a similar fate?

15. "Go ahead and take your cheap shot at the liberals pbj. Especially since your conservative congress and president have done such a bang up job of fiscal responsibility. How many magnets you suppose we could have bought with the money we have dropped in the sink hole of Iraq. The magnets probably would have made us safer."

JamesB - Where have you been lately? Liberals run the congress and a majority of Democrat voted to go to war in Iraq. It wasn't a cheap shot. How mail millions of dollars were wasted on the Monorail boondoggle and the cracjouse toilets? Not cheap in any sense.

But let's look at what Democrats were saying about Iraq shall we?

"People can quarrel with whether we should have more troops in Afghanistan or internationalize Iraq or whatever, but it is incontestable that on the day I left office, there were unaccounted for stocks of biological and chemical weapons."

Former President Clinton
During an interview on CNN's "Larry King Live"
July 22, 2003

http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/07/23/clinton.iraq.sotu/

"Every nation has to either be with us, or against us. Those who harbor terrorists, or who finance them, are going to pay a price."

Senator Hillary Clinton (Democrat, New York)
September 13, 2001

"Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime ... He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation ... And now he is miscalculating America's response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction ... So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real..."
- Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Jan. 23. 2003 |

"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force -- if necessary -- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security."
- Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9, 2002 |

"One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line."
- President Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998 |

"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program."
- President Bill Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998 |

"We must stop Saddam from ever again jeopardizing the stability and security of his neighbors with weapons of mass destruction."
- Madeline Albright, Feb 1, 1998 |

"He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983."
- Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb, 18, 1998 |

"[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs."
Letter to President Clinton.
- (D) Senators Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, others, Oct. 9, 1998 |

"Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process."
- Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998 |

"Hussein has ... chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies."
- Madeline Albright, Clinton Secretary of State, Nov. 10, 1999 |

"We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandate of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and th! e means of delivering them."
- Sen. Carl Levin (D, MI), Sept. 19, 2002 |

"We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country."
- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002 |

"Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power."
- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002 |

"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction."
- Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA), Sept. 27, 2002 |

"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons..."
- Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV), Oct. 3, 2002 |

"There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years ... We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction."
- Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D, WV), Oct 10, 2002

"In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members ... It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons."
- Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), Oct 10, 2002

"We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction."
- Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL), Dec. 8, 2002 |